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The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyra


The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid

by Walter Jon Williams

What we might call the Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid Situation began in the Staré Mêsto on a
windy spring day. We were clumped beneath the statue of Jan Hus and in the midst of our medley of
South American Tunes Made Famous by North American Pop Singers. The segue from "Cielito Lindo" to
"El Condor Pasa" required some complicated fingering, and when I glanced up from my guitarra I saw
our contact standing in the crowd, smoking a cigarette and making a bad show of pretending he had
nothing better to do but stand in Prague's Old Town and listen to a family of nine Aymara Indians
deconstruct Simon and Garfunkel.

My uncle Iago had described the man who was planning to hire us, and this man matched the description:
a youngish Taiwanese with a fashionable razor cut, stylish shades, a Burberry worn over a cashmere suit
made by Pakistani tailors in Hong Kong, a silk tie, and glossy handmade Italian shoes.

He just didn't look like a folk music fan to me.

After the medley was over, I called for a break, and my cousin Rosalinda passed the derby among the old
hippies hanging around the statue while my other cousin, Jorge, tried to interest the crowd in buying our
CDs. I ambled up to our contact and bummed a smoke and a light.

"You're Ernesto?" he asked in Oxford-accented English.

"Ernesto, that's me," I said.

"Your uncle Iago suggested I contact you," he said. "You can call me Jesse."

His name wasn't Jesse any more than mine was really Ernesto, this being the moniker the priest gave me
when the family finally got around to having me baptized. I'd been born on an artificial reed island
drifting around Lake Titicaca, a place where opportunities for mainstream religious ceremony were few.

My real name is Cari, just in case you wondered.

"Can we go somewhere a little more private?" Jesse asked.

"Yeah, sure. This way."


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 The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyra


He ground out his cigarette beneath one of his wingtips and followed me into the Church of St. Nicholas
while I wondered if there was any chance that we were really under surveillance, or whether Jesse was
just being unreasonably paranoid.